Internal combustion engine pertains to inventions in which a combustible material (usually a gas) is ignited within an enclosed space or chamber, most typically following the Otto cycle. Expanding gas from combustion is converted into work by permitting the resulting products of combustion to act upon and through mechanical powers of internal parts, conveying this mechanical energy to external components.
Internal combustion engines offer convenience and reliability in creation of on demand energy production. This makes them highly desired in automotive, aviation, and marine transportation among a variety of applications. Due to increasing fuel costs, a growing demand exists for internal combustion engines with better fuel efficiency. However, only about ⅓ of the chemical potential energy is converted to mechanical energy by reciprocating internal combustion engines.
Beyond improved fuel efficiency, it is highly desirable that internal combustion engines retain an efficient output of torque energy both at high rotation speeds and at lower speeds useful for providing propulsion so that the engine may be used both to initiate movement as well as maintain velocity at cruising speeds. It is further desirable to achieve these results utilizing this internal combustion engine which does not require a dedicated exhaust configuration or stroke, complex valve arrangements, cyclically loaded moving parts, and a non-continuous momentum, and multi-directional fuel-exhaust flows. Minimizing carbon emissions is also desirable.
The present invention addresses these concerns by providing a continuous momentum direction of the internal components and uni-directional fuel-exhaust flow. The invention substantially reduces the number of moving parts required in the combustion process and that required to transmit mechanical energy. Fewer required parts allow this engine to be light weight, easier to fabricate, lower in cost, and more compact.
Some of the engines that are similar in some ways to this design are the Wankle engine (U.S. Pat. No. 5,305,721) and the Wave Rotor Engine (U.S. Pat. No. 6,460,342). These engines are only similar in regard to the usage of a rotary type compression-combustion zone. The combustion element of this invention is a unique pressure-shock wave (detonation) rotor-recoil system.